[Zevox]

Originally Posted by mistformsquirrl

I just did the stupidest thing.

I can hardly believe I did it frankly.

Here's the situation:

I have 6 squad members, including 4 assaults, 1 Major level Heavy, and a Captain level Sniper all in a single long alleyway. I also have a VIP I'm escorting.

I'm also within Dashing distance of the exit! Hooray, mission will soon be over!

Around the corner is a Thin Man. I know he's there, I know he just set himself to Overwatch.

What do I do? Do I use one of my assaults with Lightning Reflexes to waste his reaction shot? No no no that would be the SMART thing to do.

Instead I, for reasons entirely beyond my understanding, decided to send the VIP out because "Hey, he'll make it to the drop zone and be safe!"

It ended exactly as you'd expect - VIP dead, mission failed. <X_X> Since I'm on Ironman I can't reload and undo the damage too.

Ouch. I'd be bashing my head against the wall if I did something like that. Fortunately, I'm not playing on Iron Man, so I could redo it if it happened.

Originally Posted by mistformsquirrl

On the upside, I do have lasers now, and they're much more powerful than kinetic weapons. (I admit though, I do love the sound of kinetic weapons, so I'll miss them for that reason alone.)

I researched lasers pretty early, and have been slowly purchasing them, in between the myriad other things this game has for me to spend money on. By alternating them among my units so I can have almost everyone going on a mission now using them (though I only bother to give laser pistols to my snipers). Some seem better than others, honestly. The laser sniper rifle is an amazing upgrade; the laser shotgun, much less so.

Anyway, I just did a big milestone mission: my first attack on an Alien base.

Spoiler

Now that was a harrowing mission. I got out with everyone alive, but just barely. Two were critically wounded, and no one escaped unscathed.

By far my mission MVP was Yukari, my sniper. I swear she must have taken out half of the aliens in that base, literally. She now has a kill count higher even than Chie's - yet because apparently you can only get one promotion at a time, she only went up to Lieutenant. Slightly annoying, but hopefully it'll mean that her next promotions will come faster than they normally would.

The base was very light on cover, it seemed - many of what looked like low walls didn't offer any - which made it tough to position units effectively. I used up four med-pack healings during it (one carried by Yukari, three by Yukiko), most of them quite early. By the end I had Chie, my highest-rank unit and only Assault, down to one health and was being stupidly cautious with her. The alien leader turned out to have mind control powers, and he made one of my heavies shoot Yukiko, my favorite support, dropping her into critical condition. I was going to try and capture the leader, since the mission briefing recommended it, but given the circumstances (on top of the above, Chie was my unit with the arc thrower), I decided to go for the kill - and Yukari obliged with a critical hit.

Notable engagements include two instances where I had three Cryssalids deploy right next to a unit I had just moved - one of these being my first encounter in the fight! Managed to get past one of these mostly because of an ability Chie had that let her take an automatic reaction shot when enemies got within four spaces of her (she wasn't the unit I had moved, but she was nearby at the time); and another because I still had the unit's second move available, so he withdrew, I had a heavy drop a missile on the trio, and finished them with basic fire and overwatches.

Oh, and the best part of all this? On top of all the other rewards (of which there were plenty), completing this mission dropped panic by 2 points globally. Which is exactly what I needed, with more countries hitting 3 and 4 panic points. *

Of course, now two-thirds of my non-rookie units are wounded, but a couple are ones that were wounded before that mission and will be back in action in just a few days, so I should be good.

* ...and of course, after I say this, when I check my panic levels after my latest mission, I find that Egypt is back up to 4 and a couple other countries have returned to 3 already . At least I finally got a second Assault trooper from that mission, though.

Zevox